


My friend, where have you gone?

by jenesaisquoi



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenesaisquoi/pseuds/jenesaisquoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony walks the silent halls of the Avenger mansion, wishing he had his AI back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My friend, where have you gone?

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Tony and his robots a lot. I started this last year, but have since come across excellent works of this kind that reminded me of this story and inspired me to upload it. I've obviously taken liberties with Jarvis' functions and hardware, but the story isn't really about the technology, more so about Tony and his robot friends, so I stand by artistic license here. Enjoy!

Tony walks through the door, makes his way to the kitchen. 

"Hey Jarvis," he starts, "how are—" 

Silence. He's forgotten again. 

The silence is beginning to ring in his ears, a non-sound so loud it's engulfing him. This house has become oppressive. Every time he walks through a doorway, a room, a hall, his gut tightens. Where once had been a friend, only empty stale air remains. Silence is all that this house knows now and a kind of death seems to hang in the air. This is no longer a home, it’s empty space. 

Where is the disembodied voice now? Where is his friend?

He finds small comfort in Dummy, the robot who tries its metaphorical hearts out always. It’s not the same, it never was. There is artificial intelligence, but no artificial life. It may grasp commands and help out (not at all), but where is the dry wit and posh accent?

Gone. The silence of the house reminds him of this. Cold coffee, forgotten plans, no one left to remind him of life’s daily minutiae. The veins of electronic life that used to course through this house are no more. Nothing is connected, not the coffee machine, not the phone, not even his email. All is left scattered, shattered, when the brain of this electronic whole left. 

Now, Tony sits alone in his workshop, tinkering half heartedly with the glove of his suit. 

Jarvis, do you think this screw is off? What about those calibrations? I’m not sure the thrusters are working at top capacity. Do you think we should give it a new paint job? It’s looking a little scratched, isn’t it? Tony would ask, seeking opinion, specifications that only electronic feelers could pick up, seeking communication.

The screw is fine, Sir. Those calibrations are being tweaked as we speak. I will run a diagnostic on the trusters. A new paint job may be in order, Sir. The suit is looking a little ragged. Though one could say that it lends character, to go with the man inside it.

There it was; AI that was more than just electronic feedback made to seem like intelligence. Tony couldn’t even be proud at this moment, that he had outdone himself. A program that learned, adapted, molded itself to the situation. He had created a living AI that was on a constant loop, learning and changing. Jarvis was the ghost in the machine that was both so much more than ghost and machine.

Now it was just ghosts of dead wires that lingered in the house—in the mansion. He had backed him up, of course; had fail-safe after fail-safe. They had taken those as well, carried off to one of AIM’s numerous locations. He had at one point contemplated burying a backup of his system, including Jarvis, in his backyard or out in the desert where no one but him could find it. He had laughed it off at the time, now he simply huffs and bitterness rankles his tongue. 

The rest of the Avengers are away, fighting whoever it is they are fighting this week, waiting for their chance to strike back at AIM. Tony remains at the empty mansion, his equally empty suit now just a hunk of metal without the AI’s spark of life. Silence continues to engulf him. What he wouldn’t give for an electronic whir. 

Jarvis was lost, taken with hostile fingers; a disregard for software and a misunderstanding of hardware. He’d never hear a snide remark from the speakers again unless—unless—

Now Tony’s spurred into action, now the mechanic comes to fix the day, the sparks fly and synapses fire.

“Hold on, Javis. I got this.”

He’s rushing to his lab, down the stairs, around the clutter, and narrowly missing Dummy to end up in the chair in front of the unused console.

“Hey Dummy, call me genius,” Tony says throwing a crumpled paper to the little robot. “Good, you didn’t drop it this time.” The robot whirs happily. 

Tony turns back to the screen, booting it for what might be the first time since he built it.

“Jarvis always uploads himself to my cloud every time he transfers data from the Mansion to the Tower right?” Tony asks the little robot, as he waits for the system to fully boot up. “That means he would have uploaded himself just before AIM and their sticky fingers.”

Dummy whirs and brings over a mouse for Tony to plug in. One day the halls of Tony’s house may run silent without the electrical consciousness but not while he’s alive. Certainly not today. 

“Let’s bring him back, yeah?” The robot spins in acquiescence.

Command, prompt, click, type, clack clack clack, into the cloud, into the satellite, into the mainframe housed in a secret location.

“Come on, Jarvis, time to wake up.”

Tony continues typing away, entering commands, lines of code that are second nature to him now. He breathes out search parameters and breathes in binary. Doesn’t stop until he hears a fan turn on in the hardware room—replaced with new equipment the same day AIM attacked of course. Tony may be whimsical, but let it never be said that he’s not prepared with his hardware.

“Good evening, sir. It seems my date and time do not match the current date and time, do you wish to change them manually?” 

The only time Tony’s probably been happier to hear the dry English accent was the first day he’d turned on Jarvis.

“Did you just make a joke about the inferiority of common computers?”

“Never, sir.”

“It’s good to have you back, Jarvis.”

“I was unaware I could leave the premises, sir.”

“Help me make dinner, while I tell you about AIM and their sticky fingers,” Tony said.

Walking to the elevator door it opens for him, he presses no buttons, and gets out at the correct floor. When he reaches the kitchen, the appliances have already begun their work and Dummy is holding up a pan. 

Tony can feel the electrical current running through the walls, sees its veins feeding into the outlets and appliances that are connected to the main living brain. The house is not dead, not empty, there is no paradoxically loud silence. The whirs and hums of his system are back. 

“It’s good to have you back, Jarvis.”

“So you’ve said, sir.”

“So I’ll go on stating.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s good to be back.”

While Tony may catch himself wondering just how sentient his AI really is, most days he takes it all in stride, so long as he has the whir, hum, and click of electronic life around him.


End file.
